Getting back to the question posed by the o.p., the “Pick-Up Artist Movement” is not only a complete marketing fabrication which takes old ideas and wraps them in some new terminology that largely seems derived from mid-level marketing, including the italicized, underlined, and bolded fonts to emphasize “power words” to offer some special meaning but actually are semantically null. The basic theory of all of the PUA methods can be distilled to a few simple maxims: act like a powerful and attractive man (alpha male); draw positive attention to yourself by distinguishing characteristics or behavior (peacocking); dole out complements and attention sparingly to whet a woman’s interest (withholding); offer up mild challenges or insults to make a woman become engaged in proving herself (negging); and make yourself accessible but not available (distancing). Curiously, these same principles can be seen in any field of activity in which men engage in attracting women, from tango to screwball comedies with Cary Grant.
I find myself in agreement with Argent Towers that such behavior is not ingrained but learned, but I think that the PUA “movement” is very poorly postured or constructed to teach any aspect of this other than the broad strokes of making the initial approach, and then most typically to women who have emotional insecurities that are readily exploited. To a modest degree of shame I admit to having used some of the methods espoused (which, despite the exorbitant prices charged by self-proclaimed experts, are available for free to anyone with a little effort in research), and they do indeed provide a basis for opening and engaging with women. They fail, however, at providing any deeper or more substantial basis in developing the necessary emotional bonding. After some study and some initial fumbling application I found it almost trivial to open up a conversation and to “get digits” with at least fair odds, but I have consistently failed to get past an actual first date, owing to a fundamental incompetence in engaging with a woman on anything but an sterile, intellectual level.
There is a wide gulf between the unregulated “training” offered by the PUA “community” and any kind of systematic or professional coaching by the psychiatric field, the essential assumption being that one will natively pick up the means and modes of flirtation by example and observation. I don’t see the PUA “community” (which, as detailed in Neil Strauss’ The Game, consists largely of guys with a significant level of social dysfunction who have managed to overcome their deficits in one particular area via some peculiar conversational gymnastics but are in most other ways poorly adept at any kind of mature interaction) as being able to provide the kind of actual guidance to overcome whatever deficiencies have led them to lack in the field of dating and romantic relations. And it does, perhaps as a side effect, engage in certain behaviors or semantics that at least appear to be misogynistic, or at least, derisive and ultimately not productive to mature emotional relationships.
Stranger